Twitter’s running an experiment that turns favourites into retweets

The favourite feature on Twitter has always been kind of an oddball. People use it for different things — either to acknowledge a mention, a good joke, or a bookmark. A virtual hat-tip if you will.

Recently however, some Twitter users have been reporting tweets favourited by their followers on their timelines, the same way a retweet would. Peter Kafka from Re/code grabbed a screenshot of his timeline:

Favourites are kind of private. Although you can see the amount of yellow stars a tweet have received, you can’t see the specific user unless you click for more details or go to the specific user’s activity board. This means that your timeline will generally stay clean.

Twitter is known for running experiments. Last year it released a blog post stating, “It’s rare for a day to go by when we’re not releasing at least one experiment.” Like most internet companies do, Twitter experiments with various features — many of which might not become a fixed feature.

The blue bird is right there, Facebook has been in the news lately with its social experiments, which was not all great for readers. How long this will last and what will come of it remains to be seen.

Have your favourites been turned into the retweets by this latest experiment?

Author | Jacques Coetzee: Staff Reporter

Jacques grew up in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Keen to take over the world, one word at a time, he has always been interested in both politics and development and studied International Relations (BA) at Stellenbosch University. With an interest in innovation and social change, he seeks to tell the... More